Lo and Behold

The past few days have been frustrating, and I have some idea why, but some of it seems so trivial. I will write about it all anyway, because today's writing will serve as my meditation.

First of all, I wish I had more support from my wife about my dad's situation. She is always against him-- she is a snob and it shows. For some reason, though, I don't put her disregard as a reason to not be married. One would think that support for my dad would be a big deal, and it is, but coming from her, it doesn't continuously bother me.

She wouldn't understand anyway. I do love her and I married her for reasons unknown, and although I often do think about breaking it off, I have no reason to.

She doesn't share the same spiritual excitement that I do, but that is okay with me, too. I wish I could talk to her about it, but she doesn't think that way. I don't think I am supposed to teach her spiritually anyway. I know that seems weird as she is my wife, but I just don't see myself being a teacher to her like that.

She is a young soul and she acts it out on Earth, and until I get some concrete instructions, I am not in the position to change that anyway. She isn't ready, and her soul isn't old enough, that is what it is. Once I understand that, I should be able to brush off her comments. Now when I look at her, I am going to think of her as this young kid. Yikes.

It seems so backwards, but it is.

I lost track already of what I was saying.

Oh, on to the trivial things. The house totally smells like cat crap and I can't stand it. I wish we shared the cat litter duties, but that doesn't help. We need a door to the laundry room with a spot for the cat to go through, that is what it needs to be in order to block out the smell. I hope the furnace doesn't blow it up.

The house is a pigsty. It was clean Monday before I left for work, but now it's a total disaster. If I have to keep one room clean, it would be the kitchen and the dinning room table. Why? Because this is where she drops off the important things and they get lost. I couldn't care less about the living room or basement, though I like my laundry room to be clean, too. I still need to paint the darn thing.

She spent $23 on a hobby yesterday. Normally, I wouldn't mind. We are low on money, and she knows this, because every time I want to spend $10, $15, $20 on my hobby, she reminds me how broke we are. Then she goes out and spends $23 on herself. Hmm, no wonder I was upset.

Yeah, okay, so the thing about bad talking my dad disturbs me, too.

I am mad at myself because I haven't been into the spiritual thing recently. It was so strong a month ago. I feel like unless I have a spiritual mentor, I have no reason to try. I have been told, and understood, that things will happen when I am ready, but I still need to work at it right?

I tried to meditate last night, and I feel that I can do it, which is why I get scared and I stop. I know I can leave, but I get scared anyway. What am I scared of? What if I attract something bad and I don't know how to handle it? That is what I am afraid of.

I have been wasting time online recently. Over the weekend I was signing on and talking to gross people. And I was looking at photos of boobs again. I see someone flash at Mardi Gras and I think it is so nasty, but I look anyway. Why?

I love my wife and from the face up she is gorgeous, I just wish she cared more about her body. I don't want to be too superficial, but when her boobs rest on her tummy as she is standing, that is really, really gross. That is why we make love with the lights off. I see these photos, and although the story behind them is gross, I can't imagine what it would be like if my wife walked around topless and her breasts actually turned me on! There would be trouble!

Those are the main things that are bothering me. There are even more trivial things, but that would be scraping the barrel.

I admit I feel bad about what I wrote yesterday, but that doesn't mean I didn't mean most of it. Kissing my wife and seeing her beautiful face this morning was wonderful, but she had clothes on, remember. She also went through the bills for the month and claims we will be fine. I admire her interest in that area, but we can't include the unexpected events between now and then from here. This is where we go wrong all the time. She will say "we have $500 extra to put into savings," but so much "comes up" that nothing ends up in savings. Call me a pessimist, but I see the after math while she just goes on speculating.

Part of my says just don't worry about it, and it will work out (it always does), but another part of me says that maybe it is time that we do worry about it at least a little.

Granted, if we spend $0 on wants we will be fine, but that isn't the point of living. I guess I just need to appreciate the things I do have even more. This wasn't a problem until I met my wife, haha!

Anyway, I have a piano to play, plenty of music to listen to, and a house to enjoy. I am excited about cleaning out the garage when it is warm enough.

I am thinking about moving students to another day. Since I don't get paid to sit around now, I might as well rearrange things so I can get stuff done at home, instead. The only problem is that I "might" some day have students to fill those spaces, but it's been awhile. Besides, I do better with fewer students anyway.

Maybe I like my students too much. I am too nice, I think. I finally realized that my niceness makes one shy girl too nervous, so I will start being stricter. I am totally serious.

Not only am I a teacher, but I am a friend, parent, and psychologist a lot of the time. I have one lonely girl who unloads her problems every week. I see a lot of my younger self in her, so I let her vent. She needs someone to listen to her. Although I cannot do anything for her, I know it helps her to talk. It may not be any of my business that she hates her body or that her parents don't notice her accomplishments, but she needs to tell someone, and all the school folks do is tell her that her problems are her own. They aren't her own, though, and I wish I could tell her that. I almost gave her a hug one day because I felt so bad, but that would not have been a good idea, and I would never actually do such a thing! Just knowing she might feel better after letting it out makes me feel better.

Then you have the 12 year olds who wear revealing tops and they are fidgeting the entire time because they know stuff is "showing." I do not look, but their fidgeting catches my eye. If you are uncomfortable, then don't wear it! Seems simple to me. No, it doesn't turn me on at all; it's more distracting and annoying than anything.

But the weekend is coming up and I plan to be at home the entire time, enjoying what I have worked hard for.

I was crabby last night and this morning. Things were better when I was distracted by work, but now that I have some down time, I am feeling it again. There are several reasons for my crabbiness.

The main thing is that I have to make money a priority right now. I do not like money. As long as I have enough to live, then I am fine. But I do not have enough to live right now. We have spread ourselves too thin, and we have to unspread ourselves.

I get really upset with my wife because she thinks it will solve itself, but it won't. She has no idea that we have been hanging on by a thread for 3 months. Sure we have $65 in the checkbook right now, but that it all we have. We have the bare minimum in savings right now, too.

She thinks that $70 is fine, since all the bills are paid and we get paid tomorrow.

But it is not fine.

We need to put $125 a month into savings for insurance every six months. Two months have gone by now and we haven't put anything into savings. We have to pay her grandparents this week, as well.

My goal is to have enough money that we can put something extra into savings every month (above the required $125). I don't care if it is $5 or $1,000, but until we can put something extra into savings each month, we are not doing ok.

When summer lessons start in 14 weeks, I drop my income almost in half-- if we are barely making it now, how can we lost half of it?

When my report comes out next month that I am creating (if we make it that far), she is going to be pissed. We are going to have to make some cuts, but she won't like what we have to cut. I will have to trade my car in for something dirt cheap, and we have to get rid of two cats. Between food, litter, and vet bills, those cats are killing us. My car payment is $280 a month, and that is $280 too much. The turtle costs us $45 a month to maintain, though the actual animal doesn't cost a penny.

She can't leave lights on all the time. The extra electric energy, though tiny, is killing us, too.

She thinks that we can simply cut down on the "wants," like eating out, etc. It is not that simple. We have turned out wants into needs. We wanted cats, but now we need to maintain them. We wanted new cars, but now we need to maintain them. We wanted a decent house, and we need to work on it. See how this goes?

My report is going to be in two parts: 1) a break-down of every penny spent by sub category (wants, needs, bills), 2) ways to save money, also by category (wants, needs, bills).

The wants is still very low right now because we don’t spend a lot of extra money. But, we need to save on the bills, and cut back most on the needs. Though we are saving money over a long time, we don't need the big bundles of toilet paper, etc at one time. That knocks us out for a while, when we can spend less more often and it's more even. It's backwards, but that is what paycheck-to-paycheck means.

Oh, well, I can't speculate anymore until I see my own report.

I just wish she would care enough to listen to me. Although I hate money, I do very well with it-- well, until I met my wife.

I didn't spend a penny when I was younger, and now I spend twice as much as I make. I don't get it. I was happy with a few inexpensive things, but my wife has brought out the superficial side in me.

Yikes.

I am also upset that I do all the work at home. I tried looking at it as "something to do," but it's coming back to haunt me. When I was home last night, after being gone at work for 14 hours, I had to do the cat litter, feed the turtles, change their water, put the sheets on the bed, clean up the kitchen so the cats don't eat the food, and a few other things I cannot remember right now. What did my wife do? Sleep, eat, T.V., sleep, go to work.

When do I get to do what I want (i.e. News, music, etc)??? All she does is what she wants. It hurts me that she doesn't care.

She will clean the kitchen and expect me to be so proud of her like it's a huge accomplishment-- I clean the friggin' house EVERY DAY and if I didn't we would be walking in a pig sty, but she tells me "you can relax, you don't have to clean," but does she realize what would happen if I didn't do it?

And I hate the dog. I think I do. I can't wait until we have a fence and I can just leave her outside forever. The thing stinks and it needs too much attention. I can't even give my turtle attention let alone her dog.

My wife is attractive, but I wish she cared enough to make herself look desirable. I have to have the lights off when I make love to her because I can't stand looking at her nude body. From the face up she is absolutely gorgeous, and when she has clothes on she is fine, but when that shirt comes off, yucky! It's too bad, too, because she could have gorgeous breasts if she trimmed her tummy a lot, but she has no desire to. She is too lazy. Simple. She claims she is tired all the time from work-- she is tired because she doesn't do anything. I used to work retail for 12 hours a day and I was fine. Oh, well.

She knows I hate talking on the phone but she insists that we talk while I am driving. What can I do?

I am too friendly at work. There are two girls that I am really nice to, not in a romantic way, but in a friendly way, and I need to stop. I see these girls and I wish my wife were like them in a physical and happy sense, but it's my own fault she isn't. I am just teasing myself, I think. Besides, the girls as work bug me anyway. One of them is a partier like she is in high school but she is 23, and the other is 22 and reminds me of my sister way too much; small boobs, fake niceness, and everything else.

There are tons of things that need to be done at home. I created most of them myself, but someone has to do it. My wife doesn't understand the first thing about housekeeping-- money, cleaning, getting stuff done to keep a house. I swear she lives like she has parents doing it all for her, but I do it all. Even when she does chip in it's only briefly and she thinks it was the neatest thing in the world. I am talking about stuff she should be doing every day! Not once a month.

You have no idea how upset I am about the money thing, though. I told myself that I would never be like my parents, and although we have a long way to go before we get to that point, I can see it happening sooner rather than later if this keeps up.

I can't wait to show her my report. I still don't know if I should go two months or just one. We'll see.

Ugh, I wish I could go home after work like a normal person and make love to a beautiful wife-- instead I won't be home until 9:30pm, just in time for bed. When I do see my wife, she won't want sex anyway, and when her shirt comes off I will have to figure out what are breasts and what are rolls.

What happened to me? This is so unlike me right now.

Things have been going well lately. I don't know what changed, but I am certainly not complaining. If I could be superficial for a moment, I wish my wife would try to lose some weight. It's gross when she is lying there and you can't tell the difference between her rolls and her breasts in the dark.

Anyway, the money plan is still going. I have been keeping track for a week or two now.

So far I have two pages started of my project. Page one lists all of the "needs" broken down by category. At the end of two months, I am going to total the needs + regular bills. Page two is the "wants" page, also broken down by category.

Page three will be broken down only by category, not by needs or wants. For example, "food" will be a category, not food we needed or food we simply wanted to splurge on.

Page four will be ways we can save money, based on category. For example, I will list the regular bills and how we can save on those. I will list the needs and how we can save on those. I will list the wants and how to cut back on those.

The problem is simple. We have spread ourselves too thin. What we spend money on as a want has become a need. For example, we wanted turtles, so buying the set up was want, but we have to keep them alive, so maintenance is now a need. See how that works?

This is why it isn't as easy to cut back on spending when you are too comfortable spending more. My wife's friends are a perfect example. I don't mean to cut them down, but they have been a great learning experience for me, I just don't know it yet.

The solution will be difficult. It will be easy to cut back on the wants, but how do you cut back on the needs? We need to feed the cats, get cat litter, and get to the vet. How do you cut back on that? Well, you have to get rid of the source-- the cats. We have to pay for two brand new cars; you have to get rid of a car. Etc, etc.

It will be even more difficult because we don't spend much money on wants. We have gotten ourselves into a problem where everything is a need-- pets, cars, house, etc. We need to feed the cats, period.

The data will be very interesting.

I think I will have to list every possible way to save money, no matter how ridiculous. For example, "getting rid of two cats" will be on my list as a way to save money.

Well, it's pretty simple, really. We make a decent amount of money, but we still spread ourselves too thin. Her excuse is "next month will be better," but we have been saying that since November and it's only getting worse.

We simply spend too much money just because we can.

So, time to do the budgeting thing again. I don't like to have to count every penny, but she needs to see where it is going. I already did this for myself and was willing to make changes, but she didn't understand why it was necessary. Part of the reason is to secure her ego. If people knew we had to sell the turtles because we couldn't afford the $45 a month, she would rather die in a hole alone than admit defeat.

There are going to be two parts to this.

Part one will be listing the monthly expenditures that don't change. Part two will be to list the other monies we spend, rather it be monthly expenses that do change (i.e. pet supplies), or other stuff, like car tabs, eating out, etc. Once the lists are made, we can look for ways to decrease the spending. We were able to get ourselves into this, so we must be able to undo most of it, I would hope.

I can do part one right now, actually. Part two will come much later.

Here is the list of monthly expenses that I already know about and can figure out how to reduce them:

The mortgage. We pay $1400 a month for the house and there is nothing we can do about it. Unless we move into an apartment and sell the house, this will always be the way it is.

Vibe payment. Similar to the house. There is nothing to change, and we would need at least one new vehicle, so this one is set forever, too. Well, for the next 3 years at least.

ION payment. I was going to trade the car in for a very used POS, but with unexpected problems and negative equity, the only cheaper option would be to sell the ION and take the bus. Since there are no busses that cover 36 miles late at night, I need to keep the car.

The phone and cable are as cheap as we can get. We pay $8 a month for cable just to get reception, and we pay $35 for phone. If we dropped caller ID, we would be paying only $3 less, so it isn't worth it.

The electric bill is pretty reasonable for a house. The only way to get this to go down is be more energy conscious. We can get better light bulbs and turn the lights off more often. But the bulbs are more expensive to begin with, and we don't use lights that much, so we need to fine ways to save energy in other ways, like do not leave the computer running 24/7.

The gas bill changes a lot throughout the year. Once we hit a low point, we can sign up for the budgeting plan. Right now the plan would come out to $113 a month year 'round. We have only been there for 6 months through to coldest season so far, so that amount should go down. Once it gets down to about $90 a month average, we will sign up right away.

The water bill is no big deal. We just need to wash full loads of clothes and take shorter showers. The turtles are actually going to bring this bill up, as that is an extra 90 gallons a month for them.

I need to call the garbage company and get a smaller can. We pay for a 96 gallon can just for one bag of garbage a week.

Auto/Home insurance. This is as low as it gets, so there!

GM credit card. Once we pay it off, do not use it! Maybe just once a month to pay off for GM earnings, but that is it.

Same with the Kohl's card. Those are the only ones we have.

Our cell phone bill is as low as it gets for what we use it for. We could ditch the phones altogether, but that defeats the purpose of having them. Plus we are in the middle of an agreement.

We have 4 low student loans. Nothing we can do about this.

We owe grandparents money; nothing we can do about this, either.

We bought furniture. Once we pay it off, no more!

I want to put $125 a month into savings towards auto insurance every 6 months. Good luck.


That covers the main list.

This is getting into part two, but here are some other regular expenses that vary often:

Pets: I figure we spend at least $100 a month on pets. The cats' food costs $30 a month, and at least one is at the vet each month. The turtles' filters cost $45 a month to maintain. They have no other expense, other than $3.70 a month for food. The rest of the stuff is stuff we would normally buy. The electricity used for their tanks cost nothing, either. The hermit crabs had a one time cost of about $30.

Food is getting better. I have no idea how much we spend on it though, other than I found a way to save $30 a month by changing my eating habits.

Gas and other car stuff add up fast!

Then there are the other things that we need day to day, etc. This is the point of keeping track.

We will see how it goes. After the end of the month or two, I will go through everything on the list one by one and talk about how we can change it. The "needs" will need to be less needy, and the "wants" will have to be sacrificed.

We really aren't doing that bad, but I want to prevent any future problems. We have a house and two cars, ok, but we didn't need 5 cast, a dog, 4 turtles, hamster, crabs, and other crap, either. We didn't need to redo the whole house in two months, etc.

I haven't been neglecting my 'blog, I just don't have anything to report on at the moment. Everything has been pretty neutral the past few weekends. My wife hasn't done anything to upset me, and Crystal at work hasn't worn anything that would make me flinch.

Although nothing bad has been happening, nothing really good has been happening, either.

Just getting through the weeks and days as they come, though trying not to rush through anything, either.

Nothing spiritual has been going on, either. I like having a mentor, and when no one is around, I am afraid to take on the learning experience myself. I don't want to get into anything bad, and when I do get into something, I want to be able to understand it. I have been seeing colors more and more readily, so we will see what happens after that. I would like to see figures, but not in my own bedroom. I would like to wait until certain people are around, but that may not happen anytime soon, so I might have to settle for seeing things on my own. I try to see things at work, but if I really did, I might flip out.

Yesterday at the studio Erica was talking to me and she stood next to me and accidentally touched her shoulder to mine. It didn't bother me so I didn't move away from her. I think it made her uncomfortable, though, because she walked forward quite a bit. Note that I mean uncomfortable in either a bad or good way. It was one of those silly moments that we would never talk about. I know shoulder bumping is no big deal, but I made it out to be based on her reaction and my lack of reaction.

Although I am married and I would never be looking for anyone else, I wonder if she actually likes me, and that is why she acts like that. She didn't have any problems before, but now that we have chances to talk and giggle back and forth, she seems to feel awkward around me.

Why does this matter?

Anyway, back to work.

So I have had two nights of very vivid dreams. I will share both nights, starting with the first night:

Sunday night: I was dreaming that I have to visit the Eiffel tower some day. I am not sure why; it is just something that I have to do.

Anyway, I was dreaming about how scary it was, since you are never really enclosed, and you are quite high in the sky. I don't remember too many details, other than my wife getting upset with me because I was backing out of going to the top. Not to mention that the country of France scares me as a whole, anyway.

I woke up exhausted from the energy it took in my dream to get anywhere, but I got over it.

Because of the dream, I researched the Eiffel tower yesterday, and it is a scary place. Everything I dreamed in my dream seemed to be pretty much the truth about how it is set up and all.

I plan to ask people who have been there what they thought of it.



Last Night: I had a pretty arousing dream. I haven't had one in a while, so it literally felt really good.

I was at my friend Jenn's house, and we were best friends in the dream, so we were cuddling and hanging out. I remember she was trying on shirts and I was embarrassed to see her in a bra, but she told me not to worry.

Her husband came home and he was jealous that she had a male friend over.

We were hanging around her apartment, which happened to be at the bottom of a large building, and she would take me on elevator rides underground. We kept talking about making out in the elevator, but we never actually did.

When we were back at her place, she told me that I needed to find a wife, so she picked out the first person she saw. This person happened to be my real life wife. This person (my wife) and I hit it off, so we went into my friends' family room while my friend and her husband watched T.V. My wife and I started having sex right in the apartment, and we didn't care who saw us (her apartment had glass walls), and people looked at us like a tourist attraction.

Anyway, we talked about getting married, but she said she didn't want a husband, so I left her alone, since I wanted her to be my wife.

Then I woke up.

It was quick and vivid, and it felt great-- and it was with my real life wife!

It makes me wish my friend Jenn and I were closer in real life, though. Not that kind of close, but close enough that I can hug her whenever I see her and she won't freak out about it.

I love giving hugs and I wish my friends weren't so shy about it.

Jenn has always been weird like that around me, but I think she had a serious crush on me but was never able to admit it. She isn't as weird now, but she does cause some concern sometimes. She calls me a lot and I love it, but I never have time to call her back.

We are totally platonic, though, as outlined in the dream. Our friendship is as non-sexual as it can get, and I don't mean actual sex, but just the fact that we are of the opposite sex. It's like a gender-neutral relationship, which is good, I think.

What in the world am I saying!?

After seeing all of the women in tight tops today, I really, really miss my wife right now, but I won't get to see her until Thursday evening!

Ho-hum.

I am not a "perv" by nature, but this is something I just can't ignore.

There is this girl at work who I see a lot, and she always wears things that make me question her motives when she comes to work. She always wears the tightest clothes, and so tight that you can even see the patterns on her bras, etc. She is a cutie and about my age, and we get along great, but I don't think I could handle her outside of work for very long. If she were to dress like this anywhere else, I probably wouldn't even notice, but since she is at work, I have to admit it is somewhat of a distraction.

Usually I can't help but to notice what she is wearing; not because I am a perv, and certainly not because I am aroused by it, but rather because I have to wonder what is going on in her head.

Take today, for example. She is wearing a very tight transparent red top with a black camisole underneath-- no bra, of course. You can clearly make out the shape of her undisturbed breasts and I try not to notice, but I can't help it. I don't get aroused by it at all-- it's more like an "eww"-- but I still can't help to notice.

Because of the materials, her nipples are clearly visible (the texture anyway), and she is always "nipping out" because of it. She seems to have rather large nipples, which is also a turn off but a distraction nonetheless. (When I talk to her, I can see her nipples growing and shrinking in real time out of my peripheral vision!)

She must be aware of it because when she talks to me she covers her chest. I take this as a compliment-- she must have a lot of respect for me if she is embarrassed of the way she dresses when I see her. I haven't given her any reason to cover up-- I always make solid eye contact and the few times I have looked she hasn't been looking back at me.

I did look in that direction while I was starting to look away, and she caught it, but I didn't stare nor look on purpose.

I admit I check her out when she walks by, but it isn't for arousal; I am just confused why she dresses like that at work.

Like I said before, anywhere else and I wouldn't even flinch or notice her at all, but since it's at work, it is kind of distracting.

It only makes me uncomfortable because I know she is uncomfortable. If her body language expressed that she didn't care, then I wouldn't care, either.

Oh, well, I have seen enough anyway. I can perfectly describe her breasts based on her outfit, and I don't even need to see any skin.

It's like when my students wear very revealing tops, yet they act very uncomfortable in them, so that makes me uncomfortable, too.

Oh, well, I just had to get this out and stop worrying about it.

And we are on in 5, 4, 3...